songs of selma

selma, alabama: june 7th, 2008

a couple weekends ago i drove west to selma for a walking tour of the town's history. i also ended up driving around to look at buildings and landmarks outside the walking area. i learned a lot about the area and took lots and lots of pictures. i haven't had the manual camera pictures developed yet but i brought my little digital camera to capture a couple images i wanted to share.

here's what i learned:


this is where my tour started. the stairs of the library.


VII in. brooke rifle was cast august 24th, 1863 in selma at the confederate naval gun foundry. it was also the first gun shipped from the selma foundry and served as stern pivot gun on the selma-built ironclad ram css tennessee. it was the only surviving naval gun from the battle of mobile bay.


said to be one of the oldest houses in selma. it was constructed in 1825, probably on the original property and is one of the few federalist cottages left in the area.


the lee-bender-butler house build in 1840. robert e. lee's cousin designed and built the house. it's considered a greek revival home.


the tour woman told me an old lady lived in this house. in her will she left the house to all the churches but the baptist church. she was apparently afraid that 'those baptists' would flatten it and put in a parking lot. there are parking lots on either side of the house and behind it. all the parking are for the local baptist church. the lady might have had a right to be a little paranoid.


the dallas county courthouse built in 1910. in 1965 protesters marked down alabama avenue from brown chapel a.m.e church to the dallas county courthouse in an effort to register to vote.


bienville monument. this commemorates d'anville's mapping of the area in the 1700's naming selma 'ecor de bienville.' selma was the 4th name given to the town meaning high seat or throne. the other names given to selma were 'high soapstone bluff' and 'moore's bluff'.


the national voting rights museum. i didn't go in but it has longs of memorabilia from the voting rights movement and seems to be pretty awesome.


the edmund winston pettus bridge where the selma to montgomery march in 1965 which lead to the u.s. voting rights act of 1965. the bridge was build in 1939 and named after a u.s. senator.






songs of selma park was named after a poem out of the book 'the poems of ossian'. there is a poem in the book called 'songs of selma' where the city of Selma got it's name.


this is for the auburn university kids. ralph 'shug' jordan's house. he was originally from selma. he was a head coach at auburn for several years.


the brown chapel a.m.e (african methodist-episcopal)church. it was the first a.m.e church in alabama and where dr. martin luther king, jr. led the 1965 demonstrations. the congregation of this church first met in 1866 and this church was built in 1906.




these were in front of the church.


this is the corner by the brown chapel a.m.e church. i had to get out and take a picture.

i'm so glad i went out to selma for the morning/ early afternoon. people yelled from cars while i was walking around and wasn't sure if it was because i had a big camera or because i looked like a tourist. it was also super super hot that day. surprise, surprise. hopefully i'll have a couple more alabama adventures before i move north at the end of july.

amazing.
*jp